Thursday, May 24, 2012

Education Accountability Must Originate At The Local Level

A number of recent Oklahoman editorials
have disparaged those NOT backing ACE tests and the
A-F grading system. Apparently, those
of us begging to differ with these complicated, federally-derived,
accountability systems want dumbed-down standards that will graduate scores of unemployable
public school students all across Oklahoma.

Not to dodge credit, but that trend likely began in 1965 when
the first
31 page, 605 section Elementary and Secondary Education Act (now No Child
Left Behind – NCLB) unleashed a tidal wave of federal regulations upon local
schools and established the ‘pay for play’ scheme that keeps states towing the
line (according to the feds, "Here schools, do what we tell you to do, and if you do, we'll give you back some of the money we steal from your state's taxpayers to make you do what we want you to do.")

This in stark contrast to the philosophy of America’s Founders who believed that free public grammar school should be supplied by every township containing 50 families or more to teach the fundamentals of reading, writing, ciphering, history, geography and Bible study, with control and oversight directed by local school boards – a system which by 1776 had produced a higher
literacy rate than we have today.

Could unchecked growth of federal control over public
education be why NAEP
reading scores for 17-year-olds have increased only one point since 1971
and NAEP math scores for 17-year-olds have increased only two points – over 41 years? Why have SAT scores in the verbal category dropped
25 points since 1972 and math scores increased by only one?

According to the American Enterprise Institute, who released
a paper entitled,Federal
Compliance Works Against Education Policy Goals, “…fiscal and
administrative requirements often lead to expensive and time-consuming
compliance processes that are not related to improving student achievement or
school success.” Lindsay Burke, writing for
the Heritage Foundation in The
Dead Hand of Education Reform also reports that, “…while the feds
provided just 7% of education funding, they accounted for 41% of the paperwork
burden imposed on the states…”

Santa Fe South High School in Oklahoma City personified this
thesis recently when they submitted their NCLB waiver (A-F) paperwork to the SDE
only to find out that, while their test scores were fine, they
were placed on the failing school list because their paperwork wasn’t
filled out properly.

My son, in first grade at our local public elementary,
doesn’t know his basic math facts or parts of speech, but has had week long
units on Global
Warming and Rainforest
Ecology between his 2 days a week of Art (his is an Arts Integration
school). Recently, his teacher told me
she just “doesn’t
have time to teach [math facts] to mastery” because she has to teach to the
test – the results of which will soon determine whether she keeps her job.

Not only are regulations and/or mandates confusing and generally counterproductive, they are expensive. In a paper just released by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the authors show how regulations drive up costs and reduce competition. In public education, the case can be made that mandates and regulations force money to be spent OUTSIDE the classroom on administrative and compliance processes that do not affect student learning, making it impossible for actual school choice to occur by reducing competition. Why take your child to another public school when that school will be subjected to all the same federal mandates and regulations as all other public schools? The authors also discuss the adverse incentives rife at the federal level to continue this trend ad infinitum.

In the Competitive Enterprise Institute's yearly publication, "Ten Thousand Commandments 2012", the authors put an actual number to the cost of overall federal regulation. They report, "Regulatory compliance costs dwarf corporate income taxes of $198
billion, and exceed individual income taxes and even pre-tax corporate
profits." We should absolutely take umbrage with this notion - especially when it applies to those institutions supposedly teaching our children the basic skills needed to succeed in life.

Vilifying those of us who believe education is a local issue
best dealt with by parents, district school boards and education officials
rather than nameless faceless bureaucrats at the federal –
or even state level – will not change the fact that a layered, top-down bureaucracy
will never solve governance problems like a locality. Government closest to the people (parents) is
always best because it is nearest the needs of the people being served (students/parents) and paying for the services (parents/taxpayers).

If you've thought about home educating your children but have not yet attempted the task, why?

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Only parents can truly know what’s best for each of their individual children and only parents have the vested interest necessary to raise children with the education each will need to become productive Oklahomans and Americans. Every child has the right to an education best suited to them, and every parent has the right – and duty – to provide such an education. ROPE 2.0 seeks to help equip parents with the information necessary to best champion their child’s educational needs.